Work for life and life for work: a Confluence between Nietzsche and Foucault about modern Man

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to understand some fundamental aspects to the way of thinking and doing politics as it developed from modernity having as main reference the contrast between small politics and big politics from Friedrich Nietzsche's work in relation to conception of biopolitics by the sayings and writings of Michel Foucault. More specifically, the present approach will be based on the relevance given to work in the construction of modern societies within the assessment made by the aforementioned German philosopher and French thinker. In Nietzsche's terms, a culture that does not value the spirit, but which is elaborated by modern “slaves”, given precisely the centrality of work in the construction of social life as well as politics, most notably from the nineteenth century. According to Foucault's ideas, individuals are constantly disciplined and regulated through work as a fundamental aspect of modern governmentality in order to promote biogovernment of useful and docile lives. Bringing, moreover, the role of formation, that is, what is set as the objective of education in both authors in order to clarify the main characteristics of modern society. Noting, in this way, the relationship between Nietzsche and Foucault regarding the point that the educational formation that develops from industrial capitalism seeks to structure the subject in order to become a worker, that is, in order to integrate him into the system of production-consumption to exhaust their maximum contribution to the maintenance of the model already established.